Sports Betting Blog

For any basketball fan, the NBA Finals is one of the most exciting times of the year. Since the favorites on each side of the conferences tend to make it to the Finals, viewers will generally get to see two marquee teams matched up against one another. When it comes to betting, the NBA Finals can be a source of uncontainable joy or unexplainable sadness. In this article, we’ll take a look at how to bet on the NBA Finals.

Types Of Bets

In the NBA Finals, and basketball in general, there are three main types of bets – spread, over/under game total, and moneyline. The spread and game total are the most popular types of bets due to the fact that since favorites tend to win a lot of the time, the payouts reflected in moneyline betting options tend to be quite low and not worth the risk.

Home Team

Even more so than the regular season, home teams in the NBA Finals have a considerable advantage over the away teams. Home field advantage in basketball presents the biggest advantage to the home team than arguably another other professional sport. A few factors tend to contribute to this. For starters, the crowd of the home team tends to add a huge layer of adrenaline rush to the home team due to the close proximity of where the fans are seated and the enclosed arena. Home teams also tend to feel more comfortable playing in the friendly confines of their home court while keeping their routines and schedules more or less the same, with the additional comfort of how having to travel and being able to sleep in their own beds. Implicitly, NBA referees may also show a bit of a bias towards the home team due to the crowd rallying behind them.

Difficulty Of Path To NBA Finals

The NBA regular season consists of a long and brutal 82-game schedule. Add that to the fact that the NBA playoffs are quite long, with each round potentially going the distance (a full seven games), players and teams may end up being gassed by the time they get to the NBA Finals. In theory, if a team goes the distance in all three rounds, that team will have played an additional 21 games on top of their 82 regular season games – not to mention that the intensity of playoff games tend to be much higher compared to the regular season. The more games played during the playoffs, the more wear and tear players experience, which leads to higher injury risks. A team that is able to coast their way into the NBA Finals will be able to receive longer periods of rest, sustain less wear and tear, and have more time to prepare for opponent.

Superstar

Due to the fact that there are only five players on the court for each team at any point during the game, each player is able to influence the game in much broader ways compared to sports such as baseball, football, or soccer. As a result, superstars tend to shine even brighter in the NBA Finals as they’re more than capable of literally carrying a team to victory on any given night. As a result, there’s the belief that in most cases, the team with the best player in the NBA Finals will also be the team that’s more likely to win.